Presidential Election of 1956

The Candidates

By the middle of 1955, Eisenhower's personal and political popularity, coupled with a general sense of domestic peace and prosperity, made a second term in office seem all the more likely. Even though he had suffered a heart attack in late September 1955 and would need surgery shortly thereafter to treat an intestinal inflammation, Eisenhower had recovered enough by the end of the year to remain a viable candidate in the upcoming campaign season.

Nonetheless, there was a question of whether Vice President Richard Nixon would remain as Eisenhower's choice for a vice presidential candidate. There were a few months of uncertainty where Eisenhower appeared to let Nixon test his own strength within the Republican Party to determine if he had enough support to be viable candidate in his own right. Nixon had built up enough support within the party rank-and-file to help secure his position, and only one Republican politician of note, Harold Stassen, spoke out against his re-selection as running mate. By allowing Nixon to prove his own strength in the party, Eisenhower reaffirmed the strength of their ticket and solidified their joint standing within the Republican Party.

To challenge Eisenhower, the Democratic Party turned, once again, to its favored candidate from the 1952 election, Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois. Stevenson had been a reluctant candidate in 1952, but he was prepared to run again. His greatest difficulty was his choice of a candidate for vice president. Stevenson was [Page 636]deeply concerned about the existing method of selecting a vice presidential nominee; it was an unspoken but longstanding tradition, that the presidential candidate would have the decisive voice in selecting the vice presidential nominee. The choice of a vice presidential candidate also had particular implications for the party's future, because the position of vice president appeared to be a method of grooming a selected individual for the job of president. As a result, Stevenson made a novel choice: he declared that he wanted the delegates of the Democratic national convention to choose a vice president without any declared or implied influence, preference, or pressure from him.

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